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Daughters of Minyas (Minyeides), a MythSource painting
Greek

Daughters of Minyas (Minyeides)

01Identity

Daughters of Minyas (Minyeides) in Greek tradition

The daughters of Minyas stay inside while the women of Thebes leave for the hills to celebrate Bacchus. At their looms, the sisters continue the household work and take turns telling stories. Their refusal places ordinary domestic tasks beside the public festival beyond the house. As the hours pass, however, the signs of Bacchus enter their rooms: the loom threads change, green growth pushes through their work and the air fills with the scent of incense.

The sisters try to keep weaving as their surroundings alter. Cloth becomes leaves and vine shoots; torches flare, the house shakes and animal shapes appear. The daughters then lose their human forms, grow wings and become bats that shun daylight. Their story follows a decision to remain apart from the rites through to a supernatural transformation. Ovid’s account gives the sisters a shared fate, turning their continued weaving into the setting for the god’s arrival and the end of their ordinary lives.

SourceThe Metamorphoses of Ovid; Henry T. Riley translation, London: George Bell & Sons, 1889; Book IV, printed pp. 118-137

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02The myths

The myths of Daughters of Minyas (Minyeides)

1 myth, with sources recorded for each.

The Daughters of Minyas Defy Bacchus

The daughters of Minyas did not join the women who had gone into the hills for Bacchus’s festival. They stayed inside and kept working at their looms. As they wove, they took turns telling stories, while their sisters urged them to leave the house and take part in the rites. The daughters refused. Their voices and hands remained occupied with the tales and the cloth, even as the celebration sounded outside.

Then the house filled with signs of the god. Instruments seemed to play without a musician, and the air carried the scent of myrrh and saffron. The threads in the looms changed colour, and green growth pushed through the work. What had been cloth became leaves and vine shoots. The house shook, torches burned, and shapes of wild animals appeared. The daughters tried to move, but their bodies changed with the weaving. They lost their human forms and grew wings. Their voices became small squeaks, and they shunned daylight. In this account they became bats, flying from houses at night after refusing Bacchus’s festival.

The Daughters of Minyas Defy Bacchus, a MythSource painting of the scene